DoC 1.12 Rome UHV

[Meisterjaeger77]

I would love to hear your advice for achieving a UHV with Rome.
I do not even achieve to build all the required buildings (most of the time I would get Barracks and Aqueducts, maybe even Amphittheatres but no Forums because I do not even have Currency fast enough. In a good game I might conquer most of the areas, but I never achieved to get all, most of the times I miss Africa or Anatolia/Egypt. And for the last goal, even though I do not conquer all the areas from goal 2, my Research Speed sucks a**.

No goals are achievable for me. Anybody got a guideline where I can reorientate my playstyle?

 

[ezzlar]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13364020&postcount=2

 

[calad]

Trade techs. Send scouts into India and China. Kill civs on this order: Carthage (west), Greek and then Egypt or Mesopotamia depending who is weaker. Epic and maraton speed helps alot.

 

[citis]

A lesser good strategy:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13464128&postcount=27

Build all the appropriate building sin Rome and conquer early. Carthage, Athens, Rome, Ragusa are productive cities. Milan can build all four buildings in time, build the rest in the conquered cities.

 

[Hightower]

... but no Forums because I do not even have Currency fast enough.

This is your problem. You should beeline Currency immediately. It's the only way to salvage your research as a large empire. The other essential techs do very little for you except enable the UHV buildings, but Currency is a major boost to research and has to come first.

There are other aspects to a successful Rome strategy (focus on whipping out buildings in Rome, not just the four UHV buildings but all buildings, including early on a Granary, Harbor, Library and (lower priority) Forge, so they are cheaper elsewhere due to your UP; conquer aggressively early on; explore to meet China and India; etc.), but Currency ASAP is essential for your tech rate.

 

[The Diocletian]

I consider Oracling Currency mandatory playing Rome, and I don't even go for the UHV.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

The Barbarians are quite manageable if you bring some dedicated specialist stacks to the fray.
C1 + Shock and C1 + Medic are your go-to promos versus the western Barbs as they are mostly Axes and Swordsmen.
If it gets to the point where you need to fight against horses in the east, you can supplement your Spears with C2 Legions.
It will require a lot of tile micro as well to make sure you squeeze out enough yields to meet your quotas.
Which can be tedious but you need to maximize efficiency as Rome because the deadlines are so tight.
Let us know if any of these tips work out for you.

 

[Shadow Merc]

Techwise you want to focus on Construction, Currency, then just beeline straight to those three techs for the last one, starting with Theology. You can trade for most of the other minor techs, with the others you can catch up on yourself if you're not worried about winning super fast. You may not always have the Oracle available so keep that in mind as well (honestly idk if there's time to build wonders given how quickly you need to build up and expand).

Use the whip as well, just be careful of your happiness (but try to avoid whipping Rome, use the firsts for extra production. Rome will be one of your best cities and you'll need it for those extra settlers, which mandates a higher pop).

 

[GuitarDemon]

Its hard but not impossible.

The only times I have accomplished in v1.12 it was when I was able to oracle currency.

Without the oracle I missed the victory condition year by only 2-3 turns, frustrating lol. And I have been beaten to constructing the Colosseum every time now in v 1.12

Carthage and Jerusalem are key cities. Jerusalem will help with economy (usually have a couple great prophets settled) and will produce a great prophet to help bulb theology.

I made the mistake of wanting to follow history and conquer the greeks first but if they have a copper resource or if I brought 1 too few catapults, I was screwed. Or they build a crap city but load it up with wonders. Then there is the question of gifting them metal casting so they build the Colossus but then you are up against Triremes.

The Roman UHV had definitely gotten harder in version 1.12. It only took me two tries in the old version and I think I have yet to finish a game in 1.12 (collapsed a couple turns before I could finish researching civil service ).

Shoot I think I'll start another game tonight. Going to conquer Jerusalem early on, though this will probably lead to Greeks declaring war so I'll be ready for that.


Tl;dr

Balancing economy and expansion

 

[calad]

Oracle helps but is not neccessarry. With a bit of luck you can trade needed techs, but then you really need to be lucky.

 

[Barbuesque]

I have no serious issues self teching currency and construction to meet the first UHV goal, so Oracle isn't necessary for that part.

The real issue is beating Persia to either Theology or machinery. I have had Persia getting to to Theology at turn 140, and they seem to get machinery between turn 155 and 163 in pretty much every game. It's hard to beat that without oracling currency.

 

[Rackham]

I've also had the same problem with Persia, and think there is a simple solution : don't conquer Greece until Alexander gets his empire, thus killing Persia (and maybe Egypt).
Then you can do a quick conquest of Greece with some prepared troops, make them collapse and go on to Egypt/Jerusalem

I haven't actually done it in a UHV game yet, but I just applied that strategy in a catholic URV game, and it worked perfectly.

 

[Fresol]

Can you post the Catholic URV game?

 

[Rackham]

Can you post the Catholic URV game?

I guess I could, but I didn't beat the current finish date in the URV thread (I won in 1780 or so), and I didn't take any screenshots of my early game.

Anyway I maybe I can describe what roughly happened tomorrow if you're interested (tonight it's getting late)

 

[Fresol]

Yeah I'm very interested. I think the 12 Great Prophets requirement is quite hard on later starts, on 3000 BC maybe it's easier. I also wonder how you dealt with the reformation.

 

[Barbuesque]

I've also had the same problem with Persia, and think there is a simple solution : don't conquer Greece until Alexander gets his empire, thus killing Persia (and maybe Egypt).
Then you can do a quick conquest of Greece with some prepared troops, make them collapse and go on to Egypt/Jerusalem

I haven't actually done it in a UHV game yet, but I just applied that strategy in a catholic URV game, and it worked perfectly.

Without an early conquest of Greece, I am not sure how doable the first UHV is but it's worth a try.

 

[GuitarDemon]

Monarch, on epic speed.

View attachment AutoSave_AD-0712 Turn 292.CivBeyondSwordSave

Spoiler :

Got lucky and oracled currency but I agree with other posters that it's not necessary to do but definitely makes it easier.

Tech Strategy:Oracled-Currency
Got Monarchy from Persia for Metal Casting, Agriculture from Egypt and Archery from Greece for Priesthood (after I had built the Oracle)
Hard Teched- Construction, Meditation (to use great prophet probably could have gotten it from India), Monotheism (could have probably gotten from persia but they collapsed too early)
Bulbed half of Theocracy, hard teched the rest
During the Golden Age from achieving 2/3 UHV goals I hard teched Code of Laws (to decrease maintainence) and Calender (could have traded with Ethopia or India but India had taken an independent city in Anatonlia so I had to declare war on them). I think this is were I messed up my first attempt, these techs help with the economy.
Lastly, hard teched Machinery and Civil Service.

General Strategy:
Declared war on egypt early on to take Jerusalem so I can use the Great prophet to bulb Theocracy.

Pounced on Carthage as soon as I had 2 catapults ready. I also grabbed Sur/Tyros with one legion from jerusalem.



Helped Greece destroy/weaken egypt and babylon when they got their conquer event. Thankfully Egypt destroyed most of Greeks huge stacks of doom and collapsed in the process.

The Barbarians hit HARD. Very hard. I lost 3 cities to them despite having a decent garrison of legions/archers + walls in all cities. Actually I think in the long run this helped by stability since I no longer had cities in France's core. Barbarians are a real threat to rome.

Switched to Organized religion and then Catholicism a.s.a.p to take advantage of the pagan turning into catholic churches effect. Catholicism auto spreads quickly at a certain point so this is also an important step.

I focused on minimal garrison and buildings in Egypt and Jerusalem because I know they flip to Arabia so I just put them on wealth production A.S.A.P

I was able to get the Colosseum this game and it really helped but I could have probably managed without it.

Wasted too many hammers/turns trying to build the AP like an idiot realized it was waste of time and switched Rome over to wealth production. The Catholic holy city ended up in a random independent egyptian city but I decided not to take it thinking I could save an extra Great propeht to build the holy city in rome once I finished the AP, pretty sure it doesn't work that way.

Despite some critical mistakes I still pulled a win, so on monarch there is some room for errors.

I probably could have done better with exploits but I like to play strictly historical. Conquering Jerusulam first felt a little gamey but it was crucial in conquering Egypt

All in all very fun game. Will try on a harder difficulty next time.

edit: Also I built a galley in one of the coastal cities in Gaul to transport a settler + worker I built in another city, built london 3 turns before the UHV expired so I think having a way to transport that settler is crucial

Forgot to mention, I land my troops on cartage ivory and destroy their camp next turn so that they can't spam War elephants. They had one (I think?) in the fog of war already, but it came to the aid of Carthage's last city too late to do any damage.

Hope that helps you out somewhat broski

 

[calad]

Why don't you destroy Persia? I'm sure you have enough of legions to take down Babylon and Parsa.

 

[GuitarDemon]

Why don't you destroy Persia? I'm sure you have enough of legions to take down Babylon and Parsa.

Good point but at certain point the barbarians kept spawning 10 strength camel archers from arabia who kept destroying my cities in the levant and forcing me to reload autosaves.

So I just said screw it and played defensively.

edit: Actually those barbarians forced me to play defensively everywhere.

 

[Rackham]

Fresol, here is catholic URV with Rome.
Also, I just won a Regent UHV with the strat I posted earlier (although I was lucky enough to roll a start with Oracle available).